


The Screaming of Coneys

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Peter Pan - J. M. Barrie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-12-22
Updated: 2003-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:11:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1626056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for Thyme</p>
    </blockquote>





	The Screaming of Coneys

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Thyme

 

 

"The Screaming of Coneys"  
Author's Note: Since the Peter Pan I know and love is an amalgam of versions, this story is similarly cluttered. Some of the crew's names come from the cartoon, "Peter Pan and the Pirates" (Mullins, Starkey). I've borrowed phrases ("bad form", "dark and sinister" man) from several versions, mostly "Hook". My Peter, however, is from an illustration I once saw as a child. I hope this all doesn't jar, and is taken in the holiday spirit of innovation. The sea shanty is an actual one, and can be found at <http://www.jsward.com/shanty/homeward_bound/colcord.html>.   
 

* * *

  


On nights like these, Captain James Hook is almost certain that he doesn't exist. 

The sun has just set in Neverland, sinking below the horizon in a manner that would seem glorious to someone who hasn't seen it happen _every single bloody day_ \-- a painter's palette mess of oranges and reds and pinks reflecting on the water so that the entire horizon drips with blood. 

A breeze has picked up from the northwest, carrying with it the scent of Lost Boy campfires from across the island. Most likely the whelps are licking their wounds from the day's battle, with Pan and his pixie queen attempting to muster morale after what was, at best, a stalemate. James's men had stumbled upon a troupe of boys near Mermaid Lagoon and opened fire. But the boys had all jumped into the water, the flashing mermaids guiding them to safety. 

James reclines in his cabin, boot-clad feet splayed carelessly over maps and travel logs. Even from inside, he can hear the clatter and cursing of his men, lighting lamps and changing watch. Mullins's first watch up in the Crow's Nest, and sure enough the first notes of a song wind into the cabin. Mullins nicked a bone flute off the carcass of an Indian brave last month -- or was it the month before? -- and he's steadily gotten more adept at various shanties. 

Turks and Starkey pick up the melody, chiming in with baritones made husky and harsh by brine and labor. Soon, the song has gained the voices of nearly three score men; the words drown out the flute and march along unaided. 

_We're homeward bound, heave up and down, oh, heave on the capstan and make it spin round!_

James attempts a laugh, but can only manage a snort (very undignified for a captain, he thinks). And what, exactly, is home? After all, none of them can really remember it. 

His own memories of his life before are vague and false, shrouded in fog like the sea when one follows that damned crocodile too far from the coves and eddies of Neverland. Various scenes play out in his mind, melodramatic and soaked in blood. Raiding merchant vessels under a moonlit night; strange natives with skin the color of teakwood; abducting chaste sultans' daughters for ransom. All of them are curiously hollow, as if set in a bawdy play. If James tries to review them too hard, tries to see the ghastly death masks of those sailors or remember the soft yielding flesh of those girls, all these memories freeze, then melt away like colored chalk in the rain. 

_Our anchors we'll weigh and our sails we will set; the friends we are leaving we leave with regret._

What sort of a man is he, James thinks as he reaches over to pick at the carcass of a roasted coney; what sort of a man doesn't know his own past? _A man who's not real,_ someone inside him shrieks, *a man like the sunsets and the false seas. * 

In a fit of petulance (also undignified for a man of his rank), James rips off a hind leg and throws it against the cabin wall; it echoes with a thud and drowns out the music for a moment. 

It's all Pan's fault, somehow -- Peter Pan and his band of brats, who fly in strange formations like a gaggle of scraggly geese. James orders his men to shoot them out of the sky, but their guns have grown old and slow in the eternal lazy heat, and the boys scatter before their bullets reach them. 

James has heard the stories about Peter's life before Neverland--the boy who wouldn't grow up, the boy who ran away as a baby, the boy who was brought here by that damned sprite. Each time he thinks of them, he tries to remember Neverland before Peter, but can't. Just as his memories of other places aren't real, neither are those of other times. 

Peter is real, though. He must be. Unlike the sunset and everything else, the boy isn't perfect, though he purports to be. His freckles are asymmetrical--seven on one cheek and five on the other. His smile is crooked, too; the right side rises higher than the left and makes it appear as if he's keeping a marvelous secret with no intention of ever telling. Only his hair is perfect, but when he fights it sticks against his head, slicked copper that looks as harsh as the singing of their blades when they clash together. 

James suspects that all of Neverland is really Peter, that he and everything else have sprung from a poor runaway's imagination. He takes a swig of port, washing down the bile that's risen in his mouth. 

A gust of wind tips him off even before he feels the coldness of Peter's blade against his neck. 

"Dark and sinister man--" 

"Bad form, boy," James drawls. "Very bad form, sneaking up on an adversary when his back is turned." 

Without drawing back his weapon, Peter stalks around to face him. "As compared to grown man ambushing boys while they bathe." His face is white with rage, his hair stuck up in tongues of flame around his head. 

"Well met," James allows, "But it was hardly anything new." 

"One of your men shot Nibs." 

James grins, but coughs as the blade pushes in a bit closer to his Adam's apple. "Who?" he chokes. 

"He's my--" Peter's voice falters. "He's one of my Lost Boys." 

"So I assumed." James will have to inform his men of their success later on--that is, if he survives. "Dead?" 

"Wounded," and here his eyes betray him, brimming with tears that are quickly blinked away. 

"And so you're planning on exacting your revenge on me." 

Peter nods. "Fair's fair, Hook. If he has to die," another flinch, "so do you." 

"And if he lives?" 

"Then Neverland is rid of _you_ ," and the venom in the words actually makes James shiver, though whether with anticipation or pleasure (never, _never_ fear) he does not know. 

James sighs. Even if he can die (and he's not entirely sure of that), he'd rather it not happen like this--as a sacrifice to prepubescent loyalty. 

(If pressed, James would most likely want to die in the midst of a tempest, standing proudly on the deck of the Jolly Roger as it slips down into the yawning maw of Davy Jones's locker. Peter, of course, would be cowering at his feet, unable to fly and save himself, and when the waves roll over the deck, he'd cling to James's legs and whimper, utterly helpless. The last feeling James would have would be the warmth of the boy's body, still hanging on as they are sucked into the swollen seas.) 

James hates being helpful, but no he can see no choice in the m. "I can help him." 

"What?" 

He sniffs at the boy's shock. "Shut up. In the third drawer on the left side of this desk, boy, you'll find a sachet of herbs. Rub it on Dribs--" 

"Nibs!" 

"Rub it on the boy," James continues, "and his wounds will heal within a fortnight." 

Peter's eyes narrow. "How is it I know you're telling the truth?" 

"You've put a sword up to my throat; I'm not inclined to lie." 

With the careless grace that only this boy possesses, Peter keeps his blade just below James's chin--in perfect position to slice from ear to ear, he notes--while rifling through his possessions. James supposes he should be outraged, but something about the fluidity of Peter's form stops him. He merely watches. 

Peter launches a triumphant cry that falls somewhere between a rooster crow and a cat's screech. He turns, and there's that damned smile. 

"I see you found it," James says. "Now, in return, I'd like--" 

"Besides me sparing your life?" 

"Yes, besides all that," James waves his hand. "Especially since I've only saved yours by not calling in my men--and don't think they wouldn't shoot you regardless of your sword, because they would and we both know it." 

Peter lowers his weapon, dancing away and out of the reach of James's hook--only a halfhearted jab, just to keep him on his toes. "You see, boy, I am a very bad man," he says, as if talking to a child of six, "and for very bad men, there is no such thing as altruism. A profit lies in everything." 

Peter scowls. "What do you want, Hook?" 

"Now, now, don't look so hostile," James clucks. "I didn't barge in on your supper unannounced, now did I?" 

He steps forward. Peter steps back. Another step--steady and smooth, almost like a dance, but not quite--brings them both to the stern gallery, trapping the boy against the balcony railing. James presses forward, can feel the humming of Peter's body, firm in youth and resistance and projecting a palpable hatred. His eyes are brilliant, too, sharp and green like shards of glass washed up on the beach after a storm. Peter smells of summer, and James knows he smells like wine and wickedness. 

James catches Peter's head with his good hand, stilling him. He raises his hook, and Peter's squirming brings the boy no more results than a quickening of James's breath and a tug on his hair. 

A flashing arc of metal, its sheen caught in the glow of the lamps, traces the path of James's hook. Peter squeals like a dying rabbit, like the creaking of a ship on roiling seas. Fear sweeps through his body, leaving it and transforming into lighting in James's. 

Letting go, James catches the lock of hair he's just cut off, and steps back to admire his work. Peter is blushing, but James barely notices that; his gaze is drawn to his brow. The boy's hair is uneven, now, a tuft absent. Perfectly imperfect. 

"What--" Peter raises a hand to his head, feels where James just was. "That was--" 

James turns away from him, knowing that Peter could run him through right now, but also knowing that he won't. He slips the hair into the first drawer of his desk with one last fingering of the strands, and sits back down. 

After a moment, Peter slowly flies away into the waiting arms of the Neverland night, clutching the sachet close to him. 

Captain James Hook, figment and fiend, sips at his wine with a slow smile. 

_We're homeward bound, and the winds they blow fair, and there'll be many true friends to greet us there._

 


End file.
